Various known parachutes are disclosed in a number of patent documents, including U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,705,909, 4,105,173, 4,257,568, 4,562,981, 4,634,080, and 5,028,018, and French patent document Nos. 1,064,014 and 1,129,226. In addition, there is also an allowed Taiwanese patent application No. 77206727 by the inventor of the present invention, and for which invention a U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/238,839 was filed on Aug. 31, 1988, now abandoned.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,105,173, Bucker discloses an inflatable parachute comprising a canopy with a hole in the center; flexible conduits; gas container inflation; legs distributed under the canopy in a spoke-wise manner and capable of inflation; an envelope; and a jacket attached to the parachute's lines.
However, Bucker does not solve the problem of connecting the canopy and the conduits, and the solution to this problem is of utmost importance. It can even be said that whether a parachute can truly become a useful product depends on how this problem is solved. Obviously, the canopy and the conduits cannot be made of the same material and they must be manufactured separately and then joined together, and in the process of joining, there must not be too many holes made by the stitches, because even though these holes are very tiny, they may cause the canopy to split under atmospheric pressure during use.
In French patent document No. 1,129,226, Luceber provides an idea for solving the drawback in Bucker's invention. Luceber teaches a sheath arrangement wherein the sheaths cover the inflatable legs under the canopy, as shown in FIG. 3 of Luceber's application.
However, Luceber provides only a conception for connecting the canopy and the legs. Luceber does not give a detailed illustration of a possible construction. How the canopy and the legs, after being manufactured separately, are connected by means of the sheaths and how the canopy and the legs are disengaged after connection cannot be understood from Luceber's disclosure. Therefore, in reality, Luceber has not solved the problem of joining the canopy and the legs in a fast and efficient manner. As a matter of fact, it is not the object of Luceber's invention to solve this problem.